4 ms·

Cold weather is probably worse. Lot of heart attacks that don't necessarily register as cold related. It is more difficult for the heart to pump the blood. htt

• dagmx 4y ago
  What percentage of America has to deal with freezing weather versus heatwaves though? Also, it’s much easier to warm up in cold weather than it is to cool down in hot weather.
  • irrational 4y ago
    No idea. I live in the PNW where we have freezing temperatures about as often as heat waves (not very often), but grew up in south Florida where we never had freezing temperatures but everyday felt like a heat wave.
    • ghaff 4y ago
      People do acclimatize to greater or lesser degrees. But what I'd call a heat wave in New England is pretty much just "summer" in a big chunk of the US.
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  • bluejekyll 4y ago
    One thing I was surprised to learn, mostly because growing up I always thought of AC as extravagant, it’s more energy efficient to cool a building than it is to heat it.
    • bugbuddy 4y ago
      If you flip your windows AC unit around, then you get the exact amount of heat energy removed by the AC in the form of hot air going into your room. This is called a heat exchanger. It was just cheaper to use gas furnace heater when most home was built and it is still true in many places.
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    • icegreentea2 4y ago
      That's both a function of technological efficiency (direct heating vs heat pump), and the temperature deltas we need to achieve. Using my Southern Ontario reference point, typical cooling needs are only 10-20 degrees C, while typical heating needs would be closer to 20-30 degrees. As use of heat pumps increase, and average temperatures continue to climb, the balance between heating and cooling costs will shift (this is obviously a very regional phenomenon).
    • throwaheyy 4y ago
      A reverse-cycle air conditioner is equally efficient at heating a building as cooling one.
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  • drivers99 4y ago
    This map shows the average annual low temperature (in zones divided by 10 degrees F). It's designed for plants but should give you a good idea of where it reaches freezing temperature (like, all of Florida until you get to Palm Bay or Tampa but only on the coast, for example; and all of Texas except the tip by Brownsville, and the coast by Corpus Christi). https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/ https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
  • hpkuarg 4y ago
    > it’s much easier to warm up in cold weather than it is to cool down in hot weather May be true for the human body, but when you're talking about heating a living space to a comfortable temperature versus cooling the same, in the majority of places (at least in the US) it takes way less energy to accomplish the latter. Even in a hot place like Dallas, TX with an average daytime high of 97 degrees Fahrenheit in the hottest month, it's only a 20-degree differential to bring it to 77 degrees indoors, vs. an average overnight low of 38 degrees in the coldest month, where you would need to bring it up 30 degrees and might still feel cold inside. This is not to mention how much more energy-efficient air conditioning (which just moves heat around) is compared to furnaces (which generate heat from fuel).
    • pdonis 4y ago
      It's not the heat, it's the humidity. For typical summer conditions in Dallas (even more so in, say, Houston or Brownsville), if I'm remembering the numbers from my time as an automotive HVAC engineer correctly, it takes 5 to 6 times as much energy to dehumidify the air as to cool it. And those are by no means the worst conditions on the planet: try southeast Asia or equatorial Africa. It's true that you can claw some of that back from the fact that A/C can have a coefficient of performance greater than 1, but COP also gets worse (i.e., closer to 1, less of an advantage) as the conditions get more extreme.
      • SoftTalker 4y ago
        Yes, because dehumidification involves a phase change (water vapor to liquid) and the heat of vaporization is much higher than needed to effect a simple temperature change in dry air.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    Something that affects the cold north where only idiots and moose live is boring and nobody cares. But if Silicon Valley gets slightly uncomfortable for a week it’s the end of the worlds.
• ghaff 4y ago
  Clearing snow, especially from roofs, is probably also one of the more energetic things that a lot of people do.
  • peteradio 4y ago
    Wet sloppy snow is known as "heartattack snow" around these parts.
• hitpointdrew 4y ago
  Not probably, certainly. Way more people die from cold than from heat, it’s not even close. There is no dispute the data is very clear here.